THE ELOPEMENT OF THE REV. MR. BARFIELD.

Evening Post, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 125, 23 November 1889, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE ELOPEMENT OF THE REV. MR. BARFIELD.

It lias ju6t transpired that the week before Mr. Barfield, the Unionist lecturer, who was supposed to be murdered by Invincibles but had only bolted with a girl leaving his wifo and child destitute, planned his elopement he wrote an article in the Rural World entitled " A Dream of Home." It was a most extraordinary composition, and depicted a husband and wife who seemed in perfect accord with each other. There was in that home perfect freedom, because the law of libeity was Bupreme, and the law of liberty was the law of love. The husband knew that he was above all others in the affections of that home queen, and that knowledge was the sweetest support God had given him on earth. Here he was at home with ono he trusted utterly without fear, and without the dread of being misunderstood, not on account of his own good qualities, but Bolely and simply because his wife, and the queen of his home, loved him. The day began with prayer, and ended with praise. The years passed by, and with those passing years the children grew to manhood and womanhood, while streaks of silver began to whiten their parents' hair; " and I dreamed on," he wrote, "about home, concerts in the long winter evenings and lengthened rambles on summer nights; about pictures on summer days in forest on lake, or wooded hill, and social parties here and there, when the remark was made, 'What nice people those are; what a united family they always Beem—so loving and so ready to oblige!' Then other homes were set up by the young people on the model of the old one; but always on Christmas days, or the birthday of either of the old people, as well as on the anniversary of the wedding-day, there was a gathering under the old rooftree. Such was my dream of home. Has it ever been realised ? Perhaps not in its entirety. It was a dream, and life is not a dream but an education, and into all education the Cross must enter. Of this, however, lam sure, the Cross will have more flowers round it, and the dream will be more nearly realised, if our young men and maidens, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters would only embrace and endeavour to carry out the principles laid down and the advice given in this and the following articles upon 'Our Rural Family Life.' Thus would the family life on earth symbolise the grander, purer, and eternal Hie oi heaven."